Serious craft. No stiff upper lip.

I have spent a career conducting opera, which means I have prepared and led singers through roles from the other side of the score. Coaching singers isn't separate from that work; it has always been at the heart of it. Pacing, diction, dramatic shape, the difference between a phrase that merely sounds good and one that lands in a house of two thousand.

A coach who has conducted the opera hears your voice inside the whole drama, not in isolation.

And sometimes coaching means meeting a singer who isn't yet where they need to be, and getting them there: calmly, quickly, and in time for the curtain. I have done that more often than you'd think, and it is some of the most satisfying work there is.

Across three decades in European opera I have shared the stage and the pit with some of the finest singers of our time, and coaching has been part of the work in every house I've conducted in.

Professional and pre-professional singers, conservatory students, and serious amateurs preparing roles, auditions, or competition repertoire. My background is opera, but the work isn't confined to it: I've conducted musical theatre and operetta as well, including Fiddler on the Roof and Bernstein's Candide, and I coach across the repertoire. If you want coaching grounded in real practice rather than theory, and you'd rather work hard than stand on ceremony, this is for you.